Entrepreneurs predict cross-border Cali-Baja mega-region will be new Silicon Valley

SAN DIEGO/TIJUANA — Six small gray plastic propellers whirred into action as flight test engineers Brad Golding, 34, and Grant Lieberman, 24, powered up the four-pound Y6 drone for a morning spin. The status lights blinked green, indicating the autopilot was initialized, and the three-armed vehicle lifted into the air and zipped off toward a pallet of shrink-wrapped supply boxes.

Outside the 3D Robotics office in San Diego the air was hot and still, with downtown Tijuana visible across the border with Mexico. It’s there — a 4-mile drone flight away (if the FAA allowed it) — where 3D Robotics has its manufacturing facility, and dozens of 20-something “associates” in blue lab coats, jeans and sneakers were busy printing circuit boards, testing autopilots and assembling 3D’s IRIS drone, sold online for $750.

Like a growing number of tech companies in the region, 3D Robotics is a binational startup happy to leverage its unique location along the U.S.-Mexico border. On the one side is orderly San Diego, which Forbes named the No. 1 place to launch a startup in 2014. On the other is chaotic Tijuana, which offers low-cost labor but also a growing number of talented engineers of its own. According to entrepreneurs on both sides, the Cali-Baja mega-region is poised to become its own Silicon Valley.

Too often conversation around the U.S.-Mexico border focuses on security and immigration, making what some see as a seam instead become a symbol of division. But businesses like 3D Robotics see the border as an advantage and an opportunity.

“If you want to build 10,000 of something a month and it’s the exact same product and it doesn’t change, that’s an easy thing to do in China,” said Tim McConnell, 3D Robotics’ director of engineering. But if you want to build only 100, make some changes and build 100 more, McConnell said, you’re better off “nearshoring” in Mexico.